Welcome to the Homepage of the
IUPAC CPEP Subcommittee on
Electronic Data Standards

What is the SEDS?

The International Union of Pure and Applied
Chemistry (IUPAC) has a long history in the development and support of
scientific data standards. In 1995 IUPAC took over responsibility
for the JCAMP-DX range of scientific standards from the Joint Committee
on Atomic and Molecular Physical Data (JCAMP).

Since then a IUPAC Working Party has
had responsibility for the support and development of the JCAMP-DX scientific
data standards. In 2003 due to the increasing interest in the use of the
Extensible Markup Language for data exchange the Working Party evolved
into the Subcommittee for Electronic Data Standards with oversight duties
within IUPAC for all activities in either the JCAMP-DX sphere or the XML
in Chemistry area. This Homepage continues to be dedicated to the JCAMP-DX
standards. It includes pages dealing with individual projects related
to technique-specific data standards as well as generic issues being handled
by the Subcommittee directly.

Why is the SEDS needed?

There are worrying gaps in the coverage
of known chemistry by reference spectroscopic databases, which are unlikely
to be filled by the activities of the commercial sector alone. The IS-DB
offers the scientific community the opportunity to share their spectra
and develop a vital resource for future generations. Such a collection
of spectra will help to provide significant improvements in human health,
new materials, environmental protection, sustainable development and educational
progress.

XML in Chemistry

XML in Chemistry is a new IUPAC initiative
to bring a degree of regulation to this important and rapidly expanding
field. We aim to facilitate the validation of data dictionaries for various
groups developing ontologies expressed in XML in the broad field of Chemistry.
This will help to reduce duplication of effort around the world and allow
development projects to build on the work previous groups concentrating
on their own innovative goals rather than wasting time and effort re-inventing
wheels!.

We need your help!

IUPAC encourages the submission of projects
in all areas of chemistry relevant to its work. If you believe there is
a need for a new scientific data standard in your field and wish to know
more about how to form a limited term task group to get the standard developed
please contact the subcommittee.

News & Notices

JCAMP-DX to Origin -
A tool has been made available by the Institute for Analytical Science
in Dortmund to help chemometricians and other users of statistical
packages import numeric data from JCAMP-DX files. There
are two utilities available for downloading on the ISAS web site under
the URL:

The JCAMP to ASCII executable and the JCAMP-DLL itself
have been made available with the respective source code. The JCAMP-DLL
was tested under the Windows 98, NT4 2000 and XP operating systems.
The utilities were tested on Origin 6.0, and 7.0 as well as with Origin
Pro versions 6.1, 7.0 and 7.5.
For more information see the accompanying article in the October/November
edition of Spectroscopy
Europe.

XML in Chemistry - new IUPAC initiative to
bring a degree of regulation to this important and rapidly expanding
field.

In order to ensure the widest distribution
of information the working party tries to attend the major international
conferences in the fields in which work is currently being undertaken
or planned. Some presentations are stored
on this site for information and we will try to maintain a list of future
presentations so you will know where you can meet members of the working
party or the task groups face to face.

We are always willing to attend conferences
if requested so if you think this would benefit your scientific field
or simply wish to learn more about our programs get
in touch.

Draft documents which are currently open for
comment can be found here. The pages on this
site are intentionally short and simple (frameless and free of graphics)
and should be readable with any browser. If you encounter any difficulties
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